AspAlliance.com: Sample Chapters

LINQ Quickly - Chapter 6: LINQ to XSD

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 22:06:27 GMT

LINQ to XSD enhances XML programming by adding the feature of typed views on un-typed XML trees. A similar type of feature is available for DataSets in ADO. NET programming where we have typed DataSets. LINQ to XSD gives a better programming environment by providing the object models generated from XML schemas. This is called typed XML programming. LINQ to XSD is an incubation project on typed XML programming. This product is not released yet. All examples and information in this chapter are based on this incubation project and are tested with Visual Studio 2008 Beta 1.

Programming Microsoft Dynamics NAV - Chapter 1: The Basic Ingredients

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 21:58:56 GMT

In Chapter 1, we will deal with the basic foundations of Microsoft Dynamics NAV (pronounced as N-A-V, spelling it out), the objects that make up an NAV application, and their essential capabilities and limitations. While NAV has many structural and syntactical similarities to other programming languages, particularly Object Pascal; NAV has many unique features and facilities as well.

Once you are through with the Chapter 1, you will feel more comfortable with the NAV development environment, will get acquainted with the tools, and will look forward to get more detail. Also, you will develop knowledge that will allow you to begin thinking about the application development within the NAV environment, using the NAV programming language.

SOA and WS-BPEL - Chapter 2: SOAP Servers and Clients with PHP SOAP Extension

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 21:55:13 GMT

The PHP 5's SOAP extension is implemented as a set of predefined PHP classes that allow the developer to build SOAP servers and clients. In this chapter, you will learn how to use the PHP SOAP extension when building Web services that might then be utilized within SOA applications. In particular you will learn how to:

Expose application logic as a Web service
Build Web service providers and requestors
Encapsulate the underlying logic of a Web service in a PHP class
Use the XML Schemas specification with WSDL
Transmit XML documents containing attributes

OSWorkflow: A guide for Java developers and architects to integrating open-source Business Process Management - Chapter 6: Task Scheduling with Quartz

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 21:49:57 GMT

In this chapter, we will explore the Quartz task scheduler and its integration with OSWorkflow. We will also give a tutorial with Quartz sending events and actions to OSWorkflow. This gives OSWorkflow temporal capabilities found in some business domains, such as call centers or customer care services.

ASP.NET AJAX in Action - Chapter 2: First steps with the Microsoft Ajax Library

Sat, 13 Oct 2007 00:43:50 GMT

In the age of Ajax programming, web developers need to be more JavaScript proficient than ever. You must accomplish a long list of tasks in an Ajax-enabled page and coordinate activities on the client side. For example, you need the ability to access server resources, process the results quickly, and maintain smooth webpage interactivity. The need for programming patterns that build robust and maintainable code is also on the rise. In a nutshell, a consistent client-side programming environment that works on all modern browsers is essential.

This chapter is the first one dedicated to the Microsoft Ajax Library, which is written on top of JavaScript and constitutes the client portion of the ASP.NET AJAX framework. In the tour of the basic framework components in chapter 1, you began to write code using the library's syntax. This chapter will provide more examples and give you a comprehensive overview of the library's features.

ODP.NET Developer's Guide: Oracle Database 10g Development with Visual Studio 2005 - Chapter 3: Retrieving Data from Oracle Using ODP.NET

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 06:36:55 GMT

We have several methodologies to retrieve information from Oracle using ODP.NET. Sometimes, we may have to use few of the ODP.NET classes together with few of the ADO.NET classes to develop .NET applications efficiently.

In this chapter, we will concentrate on the following:

Executing queries with OracleCommand
Retrieving data using OracleDataReader
Retrieving data using OracleDataAdapter
Working with DataTable and Dataset when offline (disconnected mode)
Using DataTableReader with DataTable
Bind variables using OracleParameter
Performance techniques

Visual SourceSafe 2005 Software Configuration Management in Practice - Chapter 3: Creating a Service-Oriented Application

Mon, 26 Mar 2007 07:00:46 GMT

For the purpose of this book I could have used a simple "Hello World" type application that demonstrated Software Configuration Management with Visual SourceSafe 2005 and Visual Studio .NET 2005. However, I felt the need to give you as much value as possible, given the fact that the development process of building software is rarely so trivial and easy.
So, let's take a more realistic software development scenario. What I am going to build is a room-reservation system for the newly launched Orbital Hotel. As you well know, this is the very first space building, after the International Space Station, used for tourism, allowing people to enjoy a view of our blue planet and stars from their private rooms. OK, OK, the Orbital Hotel doesn't yet exist, but when it does, it must have a room reservation system anyway. Who knows, it might be this one. I will build a prototype for a hotel reservation system outlining the way Software Configuration Management makes the job easier. Don't worry if you are not fully familiar with the technologies used. The purpose of this application is purely for reference, so you can sit back and relax.

For more details please visit http://www.packtpub.com/visual-sourcesafe-2005/book.

C++/CLI in Action - Chapter 1: Introduction to C++/CLI

Fri, 16 Mar 2007 00:58:54 GMT

When C++ was wedded to CLI with a slash, it was apparent from the beginning that it wasn't going to be a celebrity marriage. The world's most powerful high level programming language - C++ - was given a face-lift so that it could be used to develop on what could potentially be the world's most popular runtime environment: the CLI. In this chapter, you'll see what C++/CLI can be used for and how C++/CLI improves the now-obsolete Managed C++ syntax. We'll also go over basic C++/ CLI syntax. By the end of this chapter, you'll know how to write and compile a C++/CLI program and how to declare and use managed types. Some of the new syntactic features may take a little getting used to, but C++ as a language has never had simplicity as its primary design concern. Once you get used to it, you can harness the power and ingenuity of the language and put that to effective use.

Community Server Quickly - Chapter 8: Customizing Community Server

Mon, 15 Jan 2007 12:36:48 GMT

In this chapter, we will demonstrate how to modify the look and feel of your site with the help of themes. You will also learn how to customize themes with the help of Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) files. We will go one step further ahead and examine the implementation of the FreeTextBoxWrapper add-on and calendar module into Community Server site. Towards the end of the chapter, you will learn how to create custom links on the navigation bar.

Essential ASP.NET 2.0 - Chapter 4: State Management

Mon, 15 Jan 2007 12:30:45 GMT

ASP.NET 2.0 does not offer a penultimate solution for storing client state, but it does introduce three new features that should be considered any time you are looking for a place to store state on behalf of individual users. The first feature, cross-page posting, is actually the resurrection of a common technique used in classic ASP and other Web development environments for propagating state between two pages. This technique was not available in ASP.NET 1.1 because of the way POST requests were parsed and processed by individual pages, but has now been reincorporated into ASP.NET in such a way that it works in conjunction with server-side controls and other ASP.NET features. The second feature is a trio of new server-side controls that implement the common technique of showing and hiding portions of a page as the user interacts with it. The Wizard control gives developers a simple way to construct a multistep user interface on a single page, and the MultiView and View controls provide a slightly lowerlevel (and more flexible) way of hiding and displaying panes.
The last feature, Profile, is by far the most intriguing. Profile provides a prebuilt implementation that will store per-client state across requests and even sessions of your application in a persistent back-end data store. It ties into the Membership provider of ASP.NET 2.0 for identifying authenticated clients, and generates its own identifier for working with anonymous users as well, storing each client's data in a preconfigured database table. This feature provides a flexible and extensible way of storing client data and should prove quite useful in almost any ASP.NET application.

ASP.Net 2.0 Web Parts in Action: Building Dynamic Web Portals - Chapter 9: Portal Management

Wed, 25 Oct 2006 21:52:59 GMT

Before we can deploy our portal though, we need to start the planning that will help us to decide how the portal will be deployed. In addition, we need to work out how to support the portal after it has been deployed.
By the end of this chapter, we will not only have deployed our portal, but we will also have set a strategy for effective management of the portal when it is no longer under our control. Having this strategy in place frees us to be creative in chapter 10, when we look at the newer areas of portal development that are emerging. When we build software applications, we always go through the well-known Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) process. The SDLC defines the steps and processes that we must pass through to create quality software applications. This is essentially a linear progression from planning stages though to development, finishing with the testing and deployment stages. Because of the linear nature of the SDLC, it is also commonly referred to as the “lifecycle” of application development. While the majority of the tasks we’ve embarked upon so far have been associated with the development stage of the lifecycle, we must now turn our attention to the last two phases of the SDLC lifecycle—testing and deployment.
So what exactly will happen when our application leaves the development environment, and what can we do to ensure that we are able to manage and provide support for the portal when it leaves our hands? This chapter answers those questions.

Beginning Ajax with ASP.NET - Chapter 5: Data Communication: XML, XSLT, and JSON

Tue, 29 Aug 2006 12:24:44 GMT

An important part of any type of distributed application is how data is pushed around between tiers or layers of the application. Additionally, with Ajax, several concepts are fairly important to know and understand, concepts involved with building distributed heterogeneous environments. Accordingly, in this chapter, you are going to look at:

XML—XML is Extensible Markup Language. It is primarily used for data interchange.
XSLT— XSLT is Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations. XSLT is designed to take XML data from one format and put it into another format.
JSON—JSON is the JavaScript Object Notation. JSON is a lightweight data interchange format.

From the Wrox book, Beginning Ajax with ASP.NET (ISBN 0-471-78544-X) published by John Wiley and Sons, and available at your favorite book seller. Reprinted with permission.

ASP.NET 2.0 Unleashed - Chapter 3: Using the Validation Controls

Mon, 31 Jul 2006 09:33:10 GMT

In this chapter, you learn how to validate form fields when a form is submitted to the web server. You can use the validation controls to prevent users from submitting the wrong type of data into a database table. For example, you can use validation controls to prevent a user from submitting the value "Apple" for a birth date field.
In the first part of this chapter, you are provided with an overview of the standard validation controls included in the ASP.NET 2.0 Framework. You learn how to control how validation errors are displayed, how to highlight validation error messages, and how to use validation groups. You are provided with sample code for using each of the standard validation controls.
Next, we extend the basic validation controls with our own custom validation controls. For example, you learn how to create an AjaxValidator control that enables you to call a server-side validation function from the client.

Overview of the Validation Controls
Using the RequiredFieldValidator Control
Using the RangeValidator Control
Using the CompareValidator Control
Using the RegularExpressionValidator Control
Using the CustomValidator Control
Using the ValidationSummary Control
Creating Custom Validation Controls

ASP.NET 2.0 Illustrated - Chapter 2: Is It Really This Easy?

Mon, 31 Jul 2006 09:25:56 GMT

In the previous chapter, you saw how ASP.NET 2.0 contains a raft of new features that reduce the code you need to write and save you time and effort when building dynamic and interactive Web pages and applications. To further illustrate this, and so that you get a better feel for the way all these features combine to provide the overall ASP.NET 2.0 development experience, this chapter presents a scenario-based demonstration focused on a day in the life of a developer who is in the process of fulfilling the requirements of a fictional customer.
Although this may seem a contrived approach, it actually follows the general process of evolving your applications to meet the needs of the users. More than that, it shows you how all the various features in ASP.NET 2.0 fit together and interact to give you improved productivity and a simpler development process. Along the way, you will see the process steps required for:

Using a data source control and GridView to display data
Enabling sorting and paging for the rows
Providing a row editing feature
Adding filtering to select specific sets of rows
Displaying single rows in a form for editing
Working with data exposed through a business object
Caching the data to reduce database access
Using a master page to give a consistent look and feel
Adding a menu and other navigation features

By the end of this chapter, you will have a good understanding of the main features in ASP.NET 2.0 that make your life as a developer much easier.

The Microsoft Outlook Ideas Book - Chapter 4: Whole Solutions

Mon, 31 Jul 2006 09:14:33 GMT

Microsoft Outlook, in tandem with Microsoft Exchange Server, provides a powerful environment for sharing information. This book will show you how to take advantage of that to construct solutions for your business or organization from the features of Outlook. This book is a collection of scenarios that incorporate and link many Outlook components to produce surprisingly powerful functionality.
Without the need for code or specially-written applications, you will be extracting information from your Outlook Calendar, Contacts and Tasks folders to create solutions like these:

Monitoring staff leave and printing schedules
Managing meeting rooms and printing invoices
Managing fleet vehicles, their records, and servicing
Managing a school class calendar, student records, attendance, assignments, and reports

Murach's ASP.NET 2.0 Web Programming with C# 2005 - Chapter 4: How to use Visual Studio 2005 to test and debug an ASP.NET 2.0 application

Mon, 31 Jul 2006 09:02:56 GMT

Testing and debugging an ASP.NET application can be both tedious and time-consuming. Fortunately, Visual Studio 2005 and ASP.NET 2.0 provide features that make this task easier than ever. And this chapter from Murach's ASP.NET 2.0 Web Programming with C# 2005 helps you get the most from these features so you can find and fix even the most obscure bugs. To be specific, this chapter starts by showing you how to set up an application so you can test it with the new Development Server as well as with Internet Information Services (IIS). Next, you'll learn how to test an application with the default browser or with other browsers, inside or outside Visual Studio. Last, you'll learn how to use all of the features of Visual Studio 2005's integrated debugger, including the new tracepoints feature, plus ASP.NET's Trace feature.

Advanced Microsoft Content Management Server Development - Chapter 5: Searching MCMS with SharePoint

Mon, 05 Jun 2006 05:09:20 GMT

For as long as content-centric websites have been around, the need for searching the content has been there. Many of the most successful dot-com businesses have been search sites such as Yahoo! and Google. Every few months a new search site opens its doors, many of which perform aggregate searches of multiple sites simultaneously. At the other end of the spectrum, many site owners require a search capability that returns only results for their specific site. Microsoft Content Management Server (MCMS), while a very robust content management solution, does not offer any search capabilities out of the box. However, just because you have an MCMS website does not mean you are stuck without search capabilities. Microsoft's enterprise portal solution, SharePoint Portal Server 2003 (SPS), contains a powerful and customizable search engine. The indexes SPS creates are accessible for searches by submitting a Microsoft SQL Full-Text query via a Web Service. In this chapter, we will leverage SPS's search to provide a robust search capability for our Tropical Green MCMS site. On the way, we'll configure SharePoint to index our Tropical Green site. We will also try out some free components you can use in your MCMS site to execute search queries against the SharePoint index.

Murach's ASP.NET 2.0 Upgrader's Guide: VB Edition - Chapter 3: How to use master pages

Fri, 18 Nov 2005 19:40:41 GMT

Master pages, new in ASP.NET 2.0, make it so easy to include elements like banners and navigation menus on all of the pages in a web application that you'll probably want to use them with every new application you develop. This chapter from Murach's ASP.NET 2.0 Upgrader's Guide: VB Edition shows you how to take advantage of master pages right away as you upgrade to ASP.NET 2.0.

Core C# and .NET - Chapter 7: Windows Forms Controls

Thu, 29 Sep 2005 18:27:45 GMT

Introduction: A class hierarchy diagram offers a natural way to group Windows Forms controls by their functionality.
Button Controls: The Button, CheckBox, and RadioButton controls are designed to permit users to make one or more selections on a form.
PictureBox and TextBoxt Controls: The PictureBox control is used to display and scale images; the TextBox control can be used to easily display and edit single or multiple lines of text.
List Controls: The ListBox, ComboBox, and CheckListBox offer different interfaces for displaying and manipulating data in a list format.
ListView and TreeView Controls: The ListView offers multiple views for displaying data items and their associated icons. The TreeView presents hierarchical information in an easy-to-navigate tree structure.
Timer and Progress Bar Controls: A timer can be used to control when an event is invoked, a ProgressBar to visually monitor the progress of an operation.
Building a User Control: When no control meets an application’s needs, a custom one can be crafted by combining multiple controls or adding features to an existing one.
Moving Data Between Controls: Drag and drop provides an easy way for users to copy or move an item from one control to another. .NET offers a variety of classes and events required to implement this feature.
Using Resources: Resources required by a program, such as title, descriptive labels, and images, can be embedded within an application’s assembly or stored in a satellite assembly. This is particularly useful for developing international applications.

Murach's ASP.NET 2.0 Upgrader's Guide C# Edition - Chapter 3: How to use master pages

Tue, 13 Sep 2005 19:42:43 GMT

This chapter shows you how to use the ASP.NET 2.0 master pages feature, which is so valuable that you will probably want to use it with every new application that you develop. If you are new to Murach books, this chapter will also demonstrate the many features of our books that you will not find in competing books, including our "paired pages" method of presentation. Our hope, of course, is that this chapter will show you just how valuable our Upgraders Guide will be to you.